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Felix Vance
A tall well-dressed man with a lower-class accent that he puts on and takes off like a well-worn suit of clothes, Felix Vance appears unexpectedly in a swirl of pipe smoke. There's something…off about the black cat wrapped around his shoulders. He wants to ask you some questions. Just confirming the facts—he already knows that you're guilty. You cast a spell of escape, something you'd prepared in case you had to run, and with a few swirls of his fingers he unravels your spell from the inside. That won't be necessary, he tells you. He's not here to arrest you. He wants to know how you did it…and what you would charge to do it again. Moral Statistics Alignment: Neutral Good Ideal: The rich and powerful take whatever they want. Turnabout is fair play. Bond: I had to fight for everything I have, against a world that turned it's back. The few who didn't turn their backs earned my loyalty. Flaw: I think I'm the smartest person in the room, even when I'm not. Early Life Felix was born to Verity Vance and Ailith Tharumbar, a passing elf, in the Steamholes, the slums of the great city Abaruthven. Ailith soon lost interest in boring mortal life and departed for parts unknown. Felix was a sickly child, and often bullied by other children. His mother married Bartholomew Ramsey, a drunkard who made Felix's early teenage years hell. At sixteen, Felix left home to seek his biological father. It wasn't difficult. Ailith hadn't actually gone very far—he'd been distracted by a particularly verdant glade in a small forest only a dozen miles from the city, and spent fifteen years there toking up and feeling the vibes with some other local elves. He was delighted to be reminded that he had a son. Felix was not delighted. From then on he referred to himself as Vance, taking his mother's maiden name, and rejecting any connection to either of his fathers. He did, however, learn the rudiments of magic from one of Ailith's companions, Cerebrean the Learned. Cerebrean was a vast repository of magical knowledge gained over a lifetime centuries long. He was also mostly stoned out of his mind. Felix had little respect for his teacher, and considered the elf to be wasting his gifts—something he resolved never to do. To this day, Felix resents his elvish heritage. Pearthcaule University Returning to Abaruthven, Felix enrolled in Pearthcaule University, the most distinguished institution of magical learning on the continent. He performed so well on the entrance exam that the faculty were forced to allow him entrance, despite his low-born status and elvish blood. He was immediately singled out by the student population. But he was no longer the scrawny kid who couldn't win a fight—now he could fight back by outdoing them all at every subject he turned his hand to. While at good old P.U., Felix became friends with Felicia Felacio. They gained access to a forbidden section of the University library, dealing with devils and the contracts that can be made with them. Some trouble with devils and cultists occurred. Felix made contact with a less-evil-then-usual infernal creature, who became his familiar. He named it Bartleby. Despite facing prejudice on all sides, Felix graduated from Pearthcaule with top honors. Ordo Divinos After graduation, Felix joined the Ordo Divinos, an order of magic detectives tasked with protecting the realm from magical criminals. The prestigious position made him very well-off, and allowed him to support his mother. Felix, however, did not mesh well with the order's general corruption, and he was repeatedly unable to bring magical criminals to justice for political reasons. One of these criminals was {Julian's Brother}. While investigating the case, Felix visited Rutherford Wizznipple Green II in prison. Realizing that the case against him was flawed, Felix got him exonerated, but was unable to make his brother answer for it. While working for the order, Felix's mother suddenly died. Felix visited the Steamholes and discovered that his mother and stepfather had been living in squalor despite the money he sent them, as Bartholomew had gambled and drunk it away. Felix confronted Bartholomew, suspecting his stepfather had murdered his mother. Bartholomew, drunk as usual, accused Felix of being responsible for his mothers death by neglecting her to become a hoity-toity rich person, threatening to beat him as he had when Felix was a child. Consumed by a cold rage, Felix assaulted his stepfather with a psychic attack and smashed into his mind, a serious magical crime. Rooting through his memories, he discovered that his mother had died from an ordinary illness, not fowl play. He left Bartholomew unharmed, although the man carries a crippling fear of his stepson to this day and has never yet revealed the incident. A few months later, Felix caught the Earl of Burgunday using magic coercion on local women. As usual, the Earl got away with it scot-free. This time, Felix challenged him to a magical duel. He trounced the Earl very publicly, earning him a lifelong enemy, but was drummed out of the Order as a result. Criminal Activities Following his discharge from the Order, Felix took up a private practice. Unlike most private practitioners who exclusively served the nobility, Felix offered services to merchants and businesses without noble connections. Despite being considered beneath contempt by the nobility, the mercantile class didn't actually lack in money, and Felix did very well for himself. But the injustice he had observed still burned him, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. If he couldn't bring the nobility to justice, he could at least hurt them by taking away the things they cared about the most—their stuff. He made contact with Felicia, now a skilled burglar, and with {Julian}, who was able to assemble him teams of expert criminals for difficult jobs. With his knowledge of the Order's methodology and talent at dispelling and neutralizing magical effects, he's already managed several high-profile heists. Some of his ex-colleagues at the Order suspect him, but he's always left himself covered with perfect alibis.